infrastructure

The Golden State Is Bad at Big Projects, and Even Worse at the Little Ones

How is California ever going to finish its high-speed rail project when it still can’t finish San Francisco’s Downtown Rail Extension?

I can’t read Gavin Newsom’s mind, much less understand what he meant, or meant to mean, when he gave his State of the State speech and said something about a diminished high-speed rail line that would run only from Merced to Bakersfield.

But I can tell you that 23 years ago, a restauranteur named Gavin Newsom was appointed by San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown to his first real gig in politics, …